Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [178]
“How can that be?” Kieri asked. “She’s the queen, isn’t she?”
“She is the Lady of the Ladysforest,” the elf said gravely. “She has great power—greater than mine, in many ways, but not in all. I honor her, but she resents that the taig tells me more than it tells her.”
“If you know the taig so well, you know it rejoiced when Arian and I came together.”
The elf said nothing.
“I do not know your name,” Kieri said. “She did not introduce us.”
“She did not intend us to know each other,” the elf said. “My name is long and difficult in human speech, but Dameroth will do.”
“Well, Dameroth, why have you come to me? And against the Lady’s wishes?” Kieri had not known any elf to cross the Lady before.
“I want you to understand my daughter. Of all my children—and all are half-elven, as I sired no full elves—one of the Lady’s complaints—Arian inherited most my sensitivity to the taig. It was her taig-sense, that and her mother—”
“Her mother?”
“Her mother had a strong sense of duty, and brought her up to the same. Put those together—” Dameroth placed his long-fingered hands palm to palm, then interlaced his fingers. “—the taig-sense and the duty, and she could do no other than leave.”
“She could have trusted me—” The pain and humiliation he’d felt when Arian turned and ran down the hill stabbed him again.
“It was not lack of trust in you, Sir King,” Dameroth said. “I know her well; I knew her as a child—and a stubborn little fireball she was, too. She befriended the taig early, and as a ranger bent her whole attention on the taig. She cannot ignore its distress any more than she could ignore a splinter in her eye. The taig and this realm have been her whole life. Her love for you has grown out of that, root and leaf and flower, and to live and flourish must remain so. She cannot sever that connection; the flower would wither and fade.”
Kieri frowned. Of all the reasons he’d thought of, in his furious pursuit, this had not occurred to him.
“I have more experience of humans than the Lady,” Dameroth said. “And in this matter, though I am partial, I am not blinded by anger. I saw true love in you, when you stood with her.”
“Yes,” Kieri said. “And I swear to you we felt the taig rejoice when we spoke together.”
“Trust her,” Dameroth said. “Her love for you is genuine; her sense of the taig is unerring; her loyalty to the realm is unbending. If she comes to feel that the taig truly rejoices in your marriage, she will come back. But for her, a half-elf, to place her taig-sense above that of the Lady whom we all revere and serve, to risk injury where she has been sworn to healing—that she could not do in an instant.” Dameroth paused, but Kieri could think of nothing to say. Dameroth went on. “The Lady would tell you that I have no sense of duty, and I do not pretend that Arian inherited that from me—that is all her mother and her mother’s teaching. But you should know that Arian will expect the king to do his duty, whether she is there or not.”
“She is testing me?”
“No … not you. She is testing herself, her sense of the taig’s need. But she will expect you to show the same diligence, the same loyalty, that she herself values and shows.”
“You are not … putting a glamour on me …”
“No. I could, of course, but you are the king, and it would be discourteous.” He paused, hummed, and then went on speaking. “That was to reset the boundary that let me come here without the Lady’s knowledge. I hope. I want your kingship to succeed, and not only for Arian’s sake. There are those who do not, even now. You are like a harrow that stirs the soil, bringing stones up … long-buried secrets will rise from the depths, and some will break on their hardness, elf and human, Earthfolk and folk of the air.”
“Secrets?”
“Not mine to speak of. But you’ve already made changes in the relationship of elves and humans.”
“They need to work together—”
“Of course. Most understand that, though they may not know how, or wish it were not necessary.” He turned to look Kieri directly in the face. “I have